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Marxism has been blooming around the world. Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff call it "a veritable renaissance." Samir Amin celebrates an "extraordinary rebirth." Just as socialist practice has deepened and spread its roots internationally, so has Marxian theory borne increasingly rich and bounteous fruit.… The Marxian renaissance has involved some theoretical tussles with the earlier Marxist orthodoxy. These theoretical reformulations have necessarily focused on the central problematic of the materialist perspective…. With <em>Labor and Monopoly Capital</em>, Harry Braverman has provided some central elements lor this clarified focus, helping arm us with many critical arguments for our assault on traditional views.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-28-number-3" title="Vol. 28, No. 3: July-August 1976" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Three interrelated theoretical questions stemming from recent work on production are considered: (1) Can capitalists use technologies & structures that control workers even if they are not cost minimizing? (2) Why is it not advantageous for workers in a period of socialist transition to develop the most efficient production process & expand the forces of production as quickly as possible, even if this is degrading to the workers? (3) Do capitalist production relations provide the basis for a revolutionary force which would not only overthrow capitalist relations, but also sustain the struggle along the socialist path? It is argued that the answers depend upon new & more rigorous conceptualizations for capitalist efficiency & socialist efficiency. The efficiency of a production process is of two types: (A) quantitative, realizing the greatest set of output for a given set of physical inputs; & (B) qualitative, the degree of reproduction of the class relations of a mode of production. Production processes are capitalist efficient if they best reproduce capital control over the production process & minimize resistance to this control. A production process is socialist efficient if it maximizes the control of the working class over the means of production & minimizes the possibility of this control reverting to capitalist domination. The necessities of socialist efficiency require a greater focus on the collective experience of workers as workers. M. Migalski.

3 complimentary perspectives--functional, descriptive & dialectical--can be applied to the past, present & future of the poor in America. Poverty & inequality serve several critical functions in the maintenance & stabilization of the American Capitalist system. However, the social structure of capitalism has changing requirements as it evolves over time. Increasingly stratified labor markets today serve to "divide & conquer" potential labor unity & struggle. Econ growth tends to induce workers to tolerate alienated labor in return for material reward & future gain. A descriptive analysis of the mechanisms through which the system reproduces groups with diff personality structures & behavorial characteristics reveals the key instit's to be the fam & stratified educ'al tracks. The dialectical perspective elucidates the contradictions within the structure of regulatory tax & welfare systems. One set of imperatives is the maintenance of work incentives & low-wage labor markets. The other set of constraints concerns the preservation of order & the amelioration of discontent. As technological displacement produces superfluous workers, attempts at categorical treatment, special dispensation such as negative income tax subsidies or income maintenance assistance are resisted by the working poor just above the poverty line. The dilemma arising from these reformist policies is either the undermining of work incentives or the provocation of the poor. A. Karmen.

Then in his second semester at Eastern District High School, he gave up working in school altogether. "I don't really know why, and I don't want to rational ize about it, but it may have been that I had been systematically de-educated. With all the emphasis on discipline, all the fire gets damped down. I knew I had a given role in society, and you wonder what do you need to know about Plato to fix the engine of an automobile. Anyhow, I flew apart, I began cutting classes, gambling in the bathroom, the whole bit... I picked pockets. I was a little crook.

Abridgment of essay from the forthcoming book entitled, "Political economy: radical and orthodox approaches," edited by James Weaver.